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Jury Rigging versus Tinkering
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jmanski
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PostPosted: Mon Mar 09, 2020 11:25 am    Post subject: Jury Rigging versus Tinkering Reply with quote

I am running a game for my son and his friend. They Tech heavy scavengers. My son, ever searching to push the boundaries, has his character jury-rigging and tinkering with everything.

This lead to a discussion: Jury Rig is documented (although I tweaked it a bit). But Tinkering....

I'm leaning toward making Tinkering a Technical skill in the vein of Jury Rig but with some differences, notably Tinkering will take more time and will be somewhat less dangerous. We all know that Jury Rig is slapping duct tape and a bit of junk onto whatever you need in a few minutes, but Tinkering seems to be something one does in the down time, spending more time mulling over the item. The two are definitely related, but I see them as separate enough to warrant two different approaches.

Has anyone else had this come up before?
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Kytross
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PostPosted: Mon Mar 09, 2020 1:07 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

In game, what is the stat affect of tinkering? What is he attempting to do to the items?
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garhkal
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PostPosted: Mon Mar 09, 2020 3:04 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

To me, they are the same thing.. Jury rigging is what 'tinkerer's call tinkering..
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Dredwulf60
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PostPosted: Mon Mar 09, 2020 3:33 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Jury Rigging is about making something that is broken work using whatever is available and any method that works. Meant to be temporary.
The key being to make it work almost as well as it did before it was broke.

Tinkering is modifying something to squeeze the most performance out of it or customize it out of its normal specifications using personal fabrication know-how.
The key being to make it work better than it did, even though there will be some trade-offs.

I am aware this contradicts the RAW Jury Rigging definition and effects, but that's the distinction *I* would house rule between Jury Rigging and Tinkering.
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MrNexx
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PostPosted: Mon Mar 09, 2020 6:19 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Dredwulf60 wrote:
Jury Rigging is about making something that is broken work using whatever is available and any method that works. Meant to be temporary.
The key being to make it work almost as well as it did before it was broke.

Tinkering is modifying something to squeeze the most performance out of it or customize it out of its normal specifications using personal fabrication know-how.
The key being to make it work better than it did, even though there will be some trade-offs.

I am aware this contradicts the RAW Jury Rigging definition and effects, but that's the distinction *I* would house rule between Jury Rigging and Tinkering.


My inclination would be to make "tinkering" a bit more of a long-term project. Like, I jury rig to get something working RIGHT NOW, while I tinker to improve things, long term. So, a tinkerer will have an improvement that works intermittently, while a jury-rigger will have a standard setting that works intermittently.
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jmanski
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PostPosted: Tue Mar 24, 2020 11:01 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Those were kind of my thoughts as well. I figure I'll simply lower the difficulty for tinkering since it is taking more time. I may even make the failures less spectacular, but then again I may not Evil or Very Mad

Thanks for the input. I'll let you all know how it goes as we workshop it.
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CRMcNeill
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PostPosted: Tue Mar 24, 2020 12:43 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Late to the party, but my first impression is that "tinkering" is more along the lines of the 1E version of improving ships, where characters spend CP to improve ships instead of credits. It is, perhaps, overly simplistic, but it's a good representation of time spent between missions invested in the care and feeding of a ship or other device.
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jmanski
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PostPosted: Sat May 09, 2020 8:08 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Ok, after a few sessions I have done some workshopping and am now mostly happy with the result.

Jury-rigging is RAW. It is something you do hastily or with poor materials at hand (or both).

Tinkering is basically jury-rigging, just more cautiously. I lower the difficulty by 1-2 levels but use the jury-rigging rules. This tends to create a false sense of security (with hilarious results).

My son has taken to tinkering whatever he can get his hands on. So much so I had to buy a notebook to keep track Very Happy

So far: a rifle has exploded, a pistol fizzled, and a pistol fried a power pack. There are more to come.... Twisted Evil
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Mamatried
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PostPosted: Thu May 28, 2020 5:37 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I see it as Jury rig is MAKING, and then tinkering is to me MANIPULATING.

I juryrigged this blaster together, from the barrel of a sporting rifle and the trigger and grip from a heavy balster pistol, mixed with bits found here and there, I got this working, but I can not do any tinkering on it.

I have this old blaster, I have tinkered with it, and managed to boost the damage output, reduce the weight some and I put on some cool looking wooden grips.

I can and I have imporived this blaster through tinkering


So to me jusry rigging is making most often very tempirary items or fixes that you do not have the right parts for.

tinkering to me is maipulating the item you have through addinf parts, removing anfd rpelacing them, very similar only that the jury rigging creates a "blaster" while tinering allows you modify your Blaster
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Argentsaber
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PostPosted: Sun May 31, 2020 3:49 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

CRMcNeill wrote:
Late to the party, but my first impression is that "tinkering" is more along the lines of the 1E version of improving ships, where characters spend CP to improve ships instead of credits. It is, perhaps, overly simplistic, but it's a good representation of time spent between missions invested in the care and feeding of a ship or other device.


The First Ed rules require both CP and credits. Still, I like the concept of using all three methods. Something else I have toyed around with is the idea of allowing people with the engineering advanced skill to make a sort of template improvement with CP. Rather than improve "this blaster right here," they figure a way to boost the die code of a specific model. The crunchy bits are a bit in flux, but I figure it will basically require the character first enhance the weapon with time, CP, and credits per first ed, then after take some time and roll the advanced skill to create the template. If successful, this would allow that character to upgrade other examples of the same type of item for only the credit and time cost.. though I have considered allowing the engineer to merely forgo the (3+new die code) CP in favor of merely paying the new code. any thoughts?
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jmanski
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PostPosted: Sat Jun 13, 2020 12:28 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Mamatried wrote:
I see it as Jury rig is MAKING, and then tinkering is to me MANIPULATING.

I juryrigged this blaster together, from the barrel of a sporting rifle and the trigger and grip from a heavy balster pistol, mixed with bits found here and there, I got this working, but I can not do any tinkering on it.

I have this old blaster, I have tinkered with it, and managed to boost the damage output, reduce the weight some and I put on some cool looking wooden grips.

I can and I have imporived this blaster through tinkering


So to me jusry rigging is making most often very tempirary items or fixes that you do not have the right parts for.

tinkering to me is maipulating the item you have through addinf parts, removing anfd rpelacing them, very similar only that the jury rigging creates a "blaster" while tinering allows you modify your Blaster


In my mind, jury rigging is a hasty action, most likely under duress, to save your skin.
Tinkering is essentially playing with what you have; trying something new. It's like fiddling with your hot rod to make it faster, while jury rig would be zip tying the hood closed because the latch broke.
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Totally Not An ISB Agent
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PostPosted: Fri Aug 07, 2020 11:36 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

jmanski wrote:
In my mind, jury rigging is a hasty action, most likely under duress, to save your skin.
Tinkering is essentially playing with what you have; trying something new. It's like fiddling with your hot rod to make it faster, while jury rig would be zip tying the hood closed because the latch broke.

I agree with this sentiment. I would say that tinkering is basically the ship modification rules in GG6 Tramp Freighter. I came up with jury rigging rules based on an expanded set of repair rules (which include having to make a diagnostic roll to know what the problem is). I'll post those rules when (if) I can track them down.
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Whill
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PostPosted: Sat Aug 08, 2020 12:21 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Totally Not An ISB Agent wrote:
jmanski wrote:
In my mind, jury rigging is a hasty action, most likely under duress, to save your skin.
Tinkering is essentially playing with what you have; trying something new. It's like fiddling with your hot rod to make it faster, while jury rig would be zip tying the hood closed because the latch broke.

I agree with this sentiment. I would say that tinkering is basically the ship modification rules in GG6 Tramp Freighter. I came up with jury rigging rules based on an expanded set of repair rules (which include having to make a diagnostic roll to know what the problem is). I'll post those rules when (if) I can track them down.

Cool. Looking forward to seeing that.
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KageRyu
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PostPosted: Sat Aug 08, 2020 4:07 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I have often used a skill called Jury Rig as a way out of the penalty for lacking proper tools and parts on a particular technical skill check. The way I do this is to set a difficulty for the Jury Rig skill Check based on readily available materials to the player and what is actually needed and how far apart they are. If the Player could then pass the skill check, the penalty to the actual repair skill for lacking proper components would then be ignored. To make things really interesting I allowed for Critical Success or Fumbles here to lead to unique results - for example a fumble may result in the repair seeming to work until some particularly critical moment when it doesn't just fail but fails in a spectacular way causing fresh problems with other systems. Where as a critical success (double the difficulty or more) produces some bonus effect that was unplanned.

Example:
In a D6 game I was running a pilot of a strider (like an AT-ST) had suffered a critical hit knocking out the hydraulics (couldn't move). Obviously there was no spare tanker of hydraulics nearby, or available hoses and clamps. The battle was in an urban center, with a small grocery store across the street. I set a Moderate difficulty, and when the player passed I decided he figured he could patch the hoses with Duct tape (a common field repair) and might be able to use vegetable oil as a substitute for the hydraulics fluid in a pinch. On the downside when it heated up his strider smelled like a lunch wagon serving fries.

I have felt Skills like this are a good way to allow a character to use knowledge the player may not have but the character should.
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Mamatried
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PostPosted: Sat Aug 08, 2020 6:39 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I see it this way:

Jury Rig: making a low quality item for limited use
Tinkering: impriving the knife I already have

so I jury rig a knife...from some metal and leather....it is a very low quality knife, and will most likely only have a durability of a few tasks.

I tinker with my knife, making it better for me, like adjusting the handle so it fits me better.
If this was a stiletto I could tinker with the mechanism have it shoot straigt out rather than "fold out and in place"

so to me tinkering is the manipulations of an already created item, and jury rigging is to craft a in the moment item.


I mean I jury rig a knife in the filed from wreackage, I don't tineker it
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